Haswell

[John P. Myers]

Anyways...what i had originally meant to post before my CPID decided to bend me over the kichen table...

Yes. Haswell. Intel's successor to ivy bridge. Yes it might be a year or 2, but it's worth the wait. Save your money.

Personally, my plan was to sell my i7-2600K (which i did) so i could pick up an i7-3770K for the Maxwell Spanker. However, it seems MSI will not be offering the BIOS upgrade for the Big Bang Marshal. And yes, i sent them a couple of emails letting them know how i felt about that, especially since they ARE offering the BIOS upgrades on all the motherboards the kids are using to play WoW and surf porn. So yes. I learned my lesson. Never should've bought anything other than Gigabyte :)

What i am going to do though is buy a 2700K and be happy with what i've got. I had considered putting the Marshal on eBay and getting something else, until i read about Haswell today. For those curious, the higher-end Haswell's have a projected on-die GPU performance 2x to 3x higher than Ivy Bridge. What caught my eye though was L4 cache :D And not just any L4 cache, but L4 cache on a separate die, making the Haswell CPUs a 2-chip set. Also will have up to 8 cores and 32MB of L3 cache. L4 cache is rumored to be up to 1 GB.

So yes, i'll not be spending another penny on SB-E or IB. I'm waiting for Haswell.

[Fire$torm]

Sweet, thx for the info. Not that I'll be able to afford an upgrade........

[coronicus]

wow that reminds me so much of the old days.. think it was the first pentium were you could purchase L2 cash memory modules.. I hope this means more cores can be pushed onto one die while still having a great amount of cash memory.

[Mike029]

Any Idea of a price? Ballpark?

[John P. Myers]

Any Idea of a price? Ballpark?

No not yet. And i'm sure alot more details will come out about it in time. It's still pretty far off from being launched. One other thing though is Haswell will be 22nm just like Ivy Bridge, but there will be a die-shrink to 14nm called Broadwell a year after Haswell is released. This time i'll be sure not to be stuck with a high-end MSI board they refuse to allow to ugrade :)

[DrPop]

Mmm...thanks for coming back around and giving us all the updates again!
But, suppose I need one more rig within the next 3 to 6 months; would IvyBridge be your pick for a 24/7 cruncher or would you go something else?

[John P. Myers]

Mmm...thanks for coming back around and giving us all the updates again!
But, suppose I need one more rig within the next 3 to 6 months; would IvyBridge be your pick for a 24/7 cruncher or would you go something else?

No i'd go with Ivy Bridge if you have to have another rig. But for upgrading the ones you've got, i'd wait.

[John P. Myers]

"Intel will be bringing out higher TDP processors for this platform, packing up to 14 cores, with the CPUs being available at different clock speeds and with different amounts of enabled cores. All of them will exceed the 95W TDP envelope of Sandy Bridge (the new Ivy Bridge TDP is 77W). According to Intel, these CPUs will come in at 120W, 135W, 145W and 160W TDP. Turbo Mode made the current consumption hit 120 amps. The real jewel in the crown though, is that Haswell silicon is designed to work at up to 190 amps with just air cooling."

Once again, i'm still waiting for Haswell :)

Edit: oh yeah, it will also support DDR3 and DDR4 RAM as well

[Fire$torm]

Any word on pricing?

[John P. Myers]

Any word on pricing?

nothing yet. looking like it'll be around 20 months before they're released unless ivy bridge ends up crashing and burning, which it should imo :) probably won't find out any pricing until 3-4 months before release.

Edit: "In keeping with Intel's tick-tock principle, the 14 nm shrink of Haswell is due out the year after the introduction of the microarchitecture and will be codenamed Broadwell."

There's a fair chance Haswell mobos will not be compatible with Broadwell. Instead of the external cache chip being added to Haswell, Intel decided to only add it to Broadwell, so it would be important to only purchase Haswell mobos that are also setup for the extra Broadwell chip as well. Though it is still possible Broadwell will still work with the 2nd chip being optional. Remains to be seen.

[John P. Myers]

Actually getting some conflicting info on the release date. Looking like first half of 2013 around the same time that IB was released, which i thought was much more likely. Waiting til the end of 2013 or Q1 2014 would violate Moore's law i would think :p Plus since they already have some in testing, though they're the Xeons, doesn't make sense that it would take that much longer. So i figure June next year at the latest.

You will need a new mobo for Haswell/Broadwell. It'll use socket 1150.

Also as i mentioned it'll use DDR4 which will be available later this year, though probably not for sale since nothing will exist right away that it can be used for.
For saving power, DDR4 uses lower voltage than DDR3: 1.2V or less, compared to ~1.5V. Also, DDR4 data transfer rates will range from 2133 to 4266 MT/s according to JEDEC specs. DDR3 only achieves 800 to 2133 MT/s. RAM per stick should easily reach 32GB in 2013.

[Slicker]

This is a very imformative thread, but it raises a couple questions. Why wouldn't Intel also use DDR5? You would think that with all the GPUs using DDR5 already, it would be cheaper for Intel to just go to DDR5. Makes sense, right? Nope. After doing some research, I found the GPUs actually use GDDR which is not the same as DDR and while GPUs use GDDR5, PC DDR5 doesn't yet exist making DDR4, which is new this year, the latest and greatest PC memory.

I also assume the CPUs will use less power once they shrink the die size which could potentially get them back down to where they are now. I wonder how long it will be before a person needs a 1500W power supply and has to dedicate a 15A circuit for a single computer?

[John P. Myers]

I also assume the CPUs will use less power once they shrink the die size which could potentially get them back down to where they are now. I wonder how long it will be before a person needs a 1500W power supply and has to dedicate a 15A circuit for a single computer?

It may come down but only a little. Depends on how successful Intel is with their SoC attempt. By the release of Broadwell, they're hoping to do away with the NorthBridge and PCH completely and integrate everything on-die. If they do that on Broadwell and not Haswell, then i don't see how any Haswell mobo could be compatible with Broadwell, but i do see where they'll find the extra space for the 2nd CPU chip. Maybe even have the space to add a PLX chip (cheaper than a Lucid Hydra) to increase PCIe lanes.

On a side note, Intel got it's 14nm fabrication working back in december so there should be no holdup by the time Broadwell is due.